A forgotten immigrant: Rabbi’s inquiry sheds light on 1891 Mammoth Mine explosion

As a new resident of Pittsburgh and a historian operating at the crossroads of Jewish law and American history, I was intrigued to come across a rabbinic responsum related to a major, and tragic, event that occurred in the Pittsburgh area in the late 19th century. This responsum is a perfect example of how rabbinic documents can serve as important sources for the history of Jewish communities and individuals, and in this case, teach us about a little known chapter of the history of Jews in Western Pennsylvania.

On Jan. 27, 1891, a terrible explosion occurred at the Mammoth Mine Number One, owned by the H.C. Frick Coke company in nearby Scottdale, Pennsylvania (approximately 32 miles from Pittsburgh). The Pittsburgh Post described the explosion as the “worst mining disaster that ever occurred in the United States,” killing more than 100 people, and in a different story identified the victims as nearly all being immigrants (sadly, worse mining disasters have occurred since). There were no local Jewish newspapers at the time, and I have not found any mention of the event in any of the national ones that would provide details about any Jewish victims. The list of names on the memorial plaque at the site contains a few names that could be referring to Jews, but no further information is available. One lesser known source, however, does directly relate to a Jewish victim of the tragedy.

Soon after the disaster, Rabbi Mordechai Leib Winkler of Mad, a town in eastern Hungary, received a halachic (Jewish legal) inquiry. Rabbi Winkler was asked whether or not the widow of one Avraham Yuda Krebs, who was believed to have been killed in the Mammoth Mine disaster, was permitted to remarry. We do not have any biographical information about Krebs; however, the responsum may allude to his place of origin. The person who inquired about Krebs’s wife to Rabbi Winkler also was a rabbi, in the town of Berebesti, Romania, and previously served as a rabbi in Ricse, Hungary. Both of these towns are in the vicinity of Mad, the town of Rabbi Winkler, the ultimate recipient of the inquiry. The fact that both rabbis involved in the case resided in the same general vicinity implies that they had a geographical connection with Krebs, who presumably came from the same region in Hungary-Romania. Rabbi Winkler, a highly regarded halachic legal decisor from the same region as the victim, was called upon to rule on whether Krebs could be assumed to have died in the disaster, and therefore whether his wife could remarry.

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Jewish law generally requires firm evidence that a woman’s husband is deceased before she can remarry. In cases of situational uncertainty, however, such as a husband lost at sea or at war, Jewish legal tradition generally relies upon standards of evidence that normally would not be accepted. The purpose of this is to prevent the wife from becoming an “agunah,” a woman who may not remarry due to her ongoing legal attachment to her husband. In the case of the Mammoth Mine, it seems it was known that Avraham Yuda Krebs was an employee there on the day of the explosion, but there was no identification of his body.

In his evaluation of the case, Rabbi Winkler acknowledged all the circumstances, including the severity of the explosion. Due to this, he dismissed the possibility that Krebs escaped and remained alive without notifying anyone, which would have meant that he and his wife were still married and she could not marry anyone else. In addition, Rabbi Winkler invoked the aforementioned Jewish legal tradition of relying upon circumstantial evidence to determine the death of the husband. In this case, the circumstantial evidence dictated that since it was known that Krebs was an employee at the mine, and that no survivors were found, he must have been among the victims of the explosion. Rabbi Winkler declared it acceptable to assume that Krebs died and that his wife was free to remarry, providing a thin sheet of silver lining to an otherwise terrible situation.

The tragedy of the Mammoth Mine explosion was covered extensively in the general press, with newspapers across the country reporting on the disaster. The fact that most of the victims were immigrants would not of itself suggest that there was any particular Jewish connection to the event. Furthermore, the absence of any specific materials produced by the small, developing Jewish community of Pittsburgh would have led us to pass over this intriguing, albeit tragic, event. However, the story of a forgotten immigrant and his family’s concern with Jewish law helped produce a window into an otherwise unknown chapter of American Jewish history. PJC

Rabbi Oran Zweiter is the head of the Jewish History and Tanach departments at Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh. He is also a doctoral candidate in American Jewish History at Yeshiva University. He can be reached at zweiter@gmail.com. Eric Lidji of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center assisted with this piece by providing some sources.